40 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



day at the door of a humble looking shanty 

 before which the renter was standing. 

 After salutations and inquiries about the 

 health of the family the priest said : 



"Well, Jim, how are your crops coining 

 on?" 



''Poorly, yer riverence, poorly. " 



"But your potatoes are alright are'nt 

 they?" 



"No, yer riverence, yer see the mon 

 next door planted onions." 



"Well, suppose he did, that had nothing 

 to do with your potatoes." 



"Yer see yer riverence he^planted a lot 

 of onions. " 



' 'But what had that to with your pota- 

 toes." 



"Well, yer riverence, yer seethim onions 

 was that strong that me 'taters couldn't 

 see to grow fer wiping their eyes." 



To grow a good crop of onions the soil 

 nmst be selected carefully. Take a loca- 

 tion that has been free from weeds during 

 the past two years at least. New land is 

 the best in the West from the fact that 

 weeds do not trouble diiring the first year. 

 It is well to break the land in the fall or 

 winter and Avork it as early in the spring 

 as possible. 



The amount of fertilizers required de- 

 pends upon the soil and its condition 

 whn the fertilizer is used. A very satis- 

 factory crop of onions can be grown upon 

 almost any soil if it is well filled with veg- 

 etable matter, thoroughly fertilized and 

 well drained. The onion crop is a very 

 profitable one. True it requires a lot 

 of back bending work in weeding, but 

 the returns per acre are enormous. In 

 Pawnee County, Kansas, a year ago the 

 writer saw an onion field which produced 

 800 bushels per acre and they sold for 

 fifty cents a bushel. 



the sea shore, but other sites may 

 be equally as productive. The salts 

 or even alkaline substances do not injure 

 the crop as most of the mineral substance 

 is carried away by evaporation. In some 

 localities the salt has almost been removed 

 from the land by the repeated flooding 

 with fresh water necessary to the growing 

 of rice. 



Sometimes rice plantations are used one 

 season for growing rice and the following 

 year are drained and planted to other 

 crops. This method has proven very suc- 

 cessful in both ways. The irrigation of 

 the first year carries a large quantity of 

 silt on to the ground that acts as a fertil- 

 izer for the next crop. 



The growing of rice is recommended up- 

 on unproductive soils, as a fertilizer in ad- 

 dition to the crop harvested. The fertil- 

 izing properties in the water make the 

 land valuable for cultivating in a short 

 time. If there was sufficient movement of 

 of the water to keep it pure much of the 

 unwholesomeness and unhealthfulness of 

 the rice plantations could be avoided and 

 it would become a profitable crop through- 

 out some sections of the West. 



IRRIGATION OF RICE. 



Rice plantations are successfully con- 

 ducted only where the land is flat or hav- 

 ing but a very gradual slope. These con- 

 ditions are usually found in marshes along 



BLACK SCALE IN AUSTRA- 

 LIA. 



TT is well known that orange and lemon 

 JL trees grown near the sea in California 

 are frequently infected with black scale or 

 "smut". This pest affects both the tree 

 and its fruit, requiring the latter to be 

 cleansed bywashing or otherwise to render it 

 marketable, although the flavor or whole- 

 someness of the fruit is not at first im- 

 paired by the smut. If allowed to go on 

 unchecked, however, the pest will destroy 

 both tree and fruit. The smutty appear- 

 ance of the leaves and fruit is caused by 

 the black scale insect and much time and 

 money have been spent in California in 

 spraying the trees and otherwise treating 

 them to remedy the evil. Within the past 

 two or three years, however, a parasite 

 which preys upon the black scale, known 



